Economics

Giriş Yaklaşık son 30 yıldır tüm geç-kapitalistleşen ülkelerde olduğu gibi Türkiye'de de toplumsal yaşamı derinden etkileyen değişimler yaşanmaktadır. Toplumsal yaşamı çepeçevre saran ve insanlararası ilişkilerin gelişimini belirli bir yönde biçimlendiren bu değişimlerin neden, nasıl ortaya çıktığına ve süreklilik taşıdığına dair sorular gerek eleştirel gerekse ana akım sosyal bilimciler tarafından sorulmakta ve cevaplar aranmaktadır. Özellikle Marksist düşünsel akım içinde yer alan eleştirel sosyal bilimciler bu değişimleri açıklayan analizlerinde, toplumsal ilişkiler bütünü olarak tanımlanan kapitalist sermaye birikiminin tarihsel süreçte oluşan yapısal sonuçlarına odaklanmaktadırlar. Bu tür analizlerde K. Marks'ın diyalektik yönteminin belirli bir aşamasına atıfla, değişimin izleri sürülürken bütünün ya da kapitalist sistemin iç çelişkileri belirli soyutlama düzeylerinde aranmaktadır 1 . Diğer yandan, ana akım sosyal bilimciler toplumsal değişimi açıklamaya dönük analizlerinde yaptıkları soyutlamaların bütünle/kapitalizmle olan ilişkisini ve bu soyutlamaları hem göreli hem de tarihsel olarak özgül hale getiren ilişkileri incelemezler. Bunun yerine, tarihsel sürecin belirli bir anında ortaya çıkan bütüne ait parçalar/olgular, süreçten bağımsız olarak kendi içinde evrensel/değişmeyen birer özne biçiminde soyutlamaya tabi tutulur. Nitekim toplumsal değişimin açıklanmasında eleştirel sosyal bilimciler, ele aldıkları sosyal olguyu soyutlama yöntemiyle kapitalizmin yapısal işleyişi içerisinde ve bu işleyişin taşıyıcısı konumundaki sınıfların tarihsel süreçteki hareketliliği üzerinden incelemektedirler. Bu bağlamda örneğin eleştirel sosyal bilimciler Türkiye'de devletin gelişimini açıklarken, kapitalizmin ülkede gelişimini belirleyen yapısal düzeydeki işleyişin sınıfsal taşıyıcıları üzerinden hareket etmekte ve genel olarak devletin sistemi yeniden üretim işlevi üzerinde yoğunlaşmaktadırlar 2 . Ancak bu tür bir ele alış, devletin kısa erimde kendi  Yard. Doç. Ordu Üniversitesi İktisadi İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, İktisat Bölümü, [email protected]  Prof. Dr. Marmara Üniversitesi, Kalkınma İktisadı Bölümü, [email protected] 1 Bertell Olman (2006) K. Marks'ın diyalektik yönteminde kullandığı soyutlama sürecini şu şekilde ifade etmektedir: "Konu hakkındaki en net açıklamasında Marx yönteminin 'gerçek somuttan' (yani kendisini bize sunduğu biçimiyle dünya) başlayarak soyutlama süreci vasıtasıyla (yani bütünü kendisini incelemekte kullanılan ussal parçalara ayırmak gibi bir düşünsel etkinlik vasıtasıyla) düşüncedeki somuta (yani soyutlamayla usta yeniden oluşturulan ve kavranan somuta) ilerlediğini iddia eder (Bkz. Ollman, 2006, s. 47). 2 Türkiye'de devlete ilişkin sınıfsal analizler için kısaca bkz:

This paper, explores the socio-economic roots and macroeconomic outcomes of certain correlations between economic growth and unemployment in Turkey. This research is accompanied by statistical data of the last decade. Moreover, the author briefly structures a new approach by suggesting the insertion of a certain strategy of industrialization into the economy’s growth model in order to establish a positive correlation between economic growth and the employment rate.

Published in IDEAs (International Development Economics Associates) Webpage...IDEAs Conference in Memory of Guy Mhone on 'Sustainable Employment Generation in Developing Countries: Current constraints and alternative strategies' in partnership with Action Aid and Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya, 25 - 27th January 2007.

This study aims to investigate the dynamic and complex relationship between capitalism and patriarchy in the case of home-based working activities of Turkish women recently. First, it will be revealed some conceptual clarification about work, domestic work, outworking, homeworking and home-based working briefly. Second, it will be exposed and evaluated some socialist and Marxist feminist approaches towards the explanation of the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy concisely. Third, it will be discussed the gendered position of women in patriarchal capitalist countries during a brief history of 20th Century. We will explore the way in which the capitalist accumulation process articulated with patriarchal societies in general. Historically, the changing work practices from Fordist-era mass production to flexible production systems in Post-fordism will be the central concern of this section in relation to gender differentiation at the work place. Furthermore, it will be examine that how and/or in what ways the changing current dynamics of capital accumulation have affected the patriarchal cultural structure related to women’s responsibilities at home and working conditions at work place in Turkey during the neoliberal era. In other words, it will be explored that in what ways women’s production and reproduction activities have reshaped through neoliberal state policies since 1980s. Finally, it will be introduced a specific field research about life and working conditions of home-based working women has taken place in a shanty town in Izmir, Turkey.

Throughout the history of capitalism patriarchal cultural/gender relations have been changed dramatically. The capitalist accumulation process which includes both production and reproduction processes has interacted with patriarchal/traditional gender roles closely in order to regenerate gender hierarchies specific to capitalist profit seeking behaviour/perception. In this regard, this interaction between patriarchal gender roles and capitalist reproduction relations has been examined and debated by the distinct branches of feminist movement namely Socialist and Marxist feminists. The level of this interaction and the way in which this interaction takes place differentiate through time and space. In this paper, we will investigate this interaction via activities of home-based working women in Turkey which, we believe, represent essential features of the recent global dynamics of capitalism such as informalization, feminization of un/under-paid work force, etc. In this regard, we will introduce a specific field research about life and working conditions of home-based working women which has taken place in a shanty town in Izmir, Turkey. According to the search results, the recent immigration raids from the East regions to West regions of Turkey which strongly indicates the devastating social/cultural/economic results of neo-liberal policies, triggers a kind of primitive accumulation process with regard to K. Marx and later Silvia Federici. This kind of primitive accumulation process via immigration has transformed a part of domestic unpaid work into a paid work inside the house. Yet, the level of earning differentiates between women and men. As a result, home centered work has changed traditional hierarchical relationship between women and men into a new kind of hierarchy which forces the monetization of this relationship and acquisition of traditional patriarchy by capitalist production and social reproduction processes.

Throughout the recent social / historical process, which is expressed as globalization in the mainstream social science literature and up to date from the 1980s, the increasing pace of capital accumulation in general has created new challenges for individual capitals on the one hand. All individual capitals have been forced to seek new social/natural places for valorization/realization of value as much as creation of surplus value. On the other hand, functions of the state have been changing in accordance with this valorisation process in general. In Turkey, the state has effectively intervened in various social/economic habitats in the direction of transforming them in order to secure the requirements of the capital accumulation process since 1980s. It is possible to observe concrete forms of this intervention in striking transformations in the electricity sector. In line with the demands of domestic and foreign capital groups, the state's regulations and laws implemented since 2000s can be classified as " the means of opening up to global capitals " in terms of critical/Marxist political economy. In reference to D. Harvey , the process of accumulation by dispossession becomes visible in the electricity sector's law and state regulations, which have created social consequences towards accelerating the commodification of water and recommodification of land. In this paper, we will take into consideration t wo laws: Water Usage Agreement (law no. 25150), decision on the implementation of Article 27 of the Expropriation Law (Law. No. 2942) enacted in 2003 and 2004 respectively. These laws will be assessed in terms of above mentioned social elements of accumulation process. By doing so, it is aimed to open a discussion on the social and class effects of these laws.

The mainstream economic development literature conceals many social inequalities and hierarchical relationships and therefore unequal access to public and private resources in Capitalism. One of these hierarchical relations is the unequal gender relations that persist on the basis of patriarchal culture. The mainstream literature on economic development justifies patriarchal relationship patterns and unequal gender relations via ignoring the unrequited, oppressive and unequal nature of women’s reproductive activities in the home on the one hand; and the widespread use of women in low-paid/non-paid, precarious, low skilled agricultural and non-agricultural service jobs in the public sphere on the other hand. In this paper, historically, it will be focused on alternative forms of analysis that reveal unequal economic/social relations and productive activities of women inside the mainstream economic development literature.

Historically, capitalist social production and reproduction relations have close interaction with patriarchal gender hierarchies. This interaction has been transformed dramatically. Especially, the interaction between patriarchal gender roles and capitalist reproduction relations has been examined and debated by the distinct branches of feminist movement. In this paper, I will investigate this interaction via activities of migrant women domestic workers in Turkey which, I believe, represent essential features of the recent global dynamics of capitalism such as informalization, feminization of un/under-paid work force, feminization of immigration, globalization of domestic works. I will introduce the results of my field research about life and working conditions among migrant domestic workers in Ünye, Ordu Province of Turkey, in the Black Sea region. I have conducted semi-structured, face to face interviews with a certain number of Georgian migrant women. This method is consistent with many of the qualitative approaches pioneered and adopted by feminist researchers. Öz: Tarihsel olarak kapitalist üretim ve yeniden üretim ilişkileri, ataerkil toplumsal cinsiyet hiyerarşileri ile yakın etkileşim içindedir. Bu etkileşim dramatik bir şekilde değişim göstermektedir. Özellikle ataerkil toplumsal cinsiyet rolleri ile kapitalist yeniden-üretim ilişkileri arasındaki etkileşim feminist hareketin çeşitli oluşumları tarafından incelenmekte ve tartışılmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, Türkiye'de bu etkileşimi temsil ettiğini düşündüğüm somut bir örnek olan Gürcistanlı, göçmen ev-içi işçilerin yaşamlarını, çalışma süreçlerini inceleyeceğim. Bu incelemenin; enformalleşme, ücretsiz/ücretli işin kadınlaşması, göçün kadınlaşması, ev-içi işçilerin küreselleşmesi gibi küresel kapitalizmin güncel görünümleriyle yakın ilişki içinde olduğunu düşünüyorum. Çalışmada, Ordu ili Unye ilçesinde çalışan Gürcistanlı, göçmen ev-içi işçilerin yaşam ve çalışma koşulları hakkında yaptığım araştırmanın sonuçlarını sunacağım. Araştırmada Gürcistanlı, göçmen ev-işçisi kadınlarla yarı-yapılandırılmış, yüz-yüze, derinlemesine görüşmeler düzenlenmiştir. Bu yöntemin niteliksel araştırma yöntemlerini uygulayan birçok feminist araştırmacı tarafından kullanıldığı tespit edilmiştir.

Historically, since the 18th century, poverty and its gendered forms have been reproduced by capitalism and patriarchal culture. According to K. Polanyi (2001), enclosures were the revolution of the rich against the poor. R.G. Fuchs (2005) argues that the shortage of land and farm work pushed many off the farm and on the road in search of work. Women and children sometimes accompanied bands of vagrants and smugglers as scouts and decoys; the women also exchanged sex for some of the loot. In this context, from a feminist perspective, poverty emerges and becomes permanent through the intersection of hierarchies between class, gender, racial and ethnic affiliations.

On the other hand, the poverty discourse has become an important tool of the hierarchy (unequal power relations) between developed and underdeveloped (developing) countries in Capitalism. It is noteworthy that the discourse of development, which dominated the international political and economic literature after the Second World War, left its place to the discourse of poverty in the 1980s. The 1980s was also a period when developed countries and their international institutional representatives (IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization, etc.) forced developing countries to implement neoliberal economic policies that had
poverty-increasing effects.

This paper will first briefly discuss the specific history of poverty and women’s poverty in capitalism. Then, the work of international institutions on gender and poverty will be examined and evaluated from a critical perspective. Particular attention will be paid to the possible effects of masculinity studies in poverty research.

Historically, in patriarchal capitalist societies, poverty has been defined as the opposite of development and wealth. However, when analysed in the context of class and gender, it is noteworthy that patriarchal capitalism itself creates these sharp hierarchies and unequal power relations within and between societies and is visible through economic, gender-based antagonisms.
In this section, men and their perceptions of masculinity and their cultures, which are controversial issues in the international poverty and gender literature, will be examined. In this study, men and masculinities will be discussed methodically in the context of Critical Masculinity Studies developed by R.W. Connell and from a social constructivist perspective.

In this research, the hegemonic discourse of Anatolian masculinities, which have been changed historically and socially in the context of gendered power relations, is examined through the perceptions of university students. In the field research, 537 male students were surveyed, and in-depth interviews were conducted with 44 male students.  Within the framework of neoliberal policies that represent the current outcomes of patriarchal capitalism, it is possible to draw attention to the rapidly increasing population of male working-poor in Anatolia who are mostly university graduates. They are exposed to intense labor exploitation in order not to receive financial support from their families and thus to prove their masculinity. The traditional hegemonic masculinity discourse, which is unique to Anatolia historically, affects students' perceptions of masculinity in four areas: graduating from university and having a good job, fulfilling compulsory military-service, getting married and having children, and as the patriarchal sexual policy, women's honor and holy-motherhood discourse and perceptions. The formation of these patriarchal masculine values was constituted by the following historical and social dynamics of Anatolia: the cultural values of ancient Anatolian societies, the anti-imperialist struggle against the West, the military-nation discourse of the nation-state of the Republic of Turkey, and Islamic values.

In recent years, many universities have been established in rural areas in Turkey. These rural universities attract many young women and men who live in rural areas nearby or other rural areas. Among the elements that define ‘rural’ as a social phenomenon; monotony repetition practices, familial, blood-based and cultural oppressions and prejudices, and intolerance to differences. In reference to Arendt, “rural” represents the political evil of patriarchal regime. These elements also shape and limit the capacity of rural universities. This rural environment of the university is quite well-known by the students. These students also come from similar rural areas. Students also belong to low-income families such as working class, farmer, and small trades-people. Due to the traditional patriarchal structures and prevailing masculine norms, it was an uncommon and challenging experience for me to teach the gender equality lesson which is selected as a voluntary course in the fourth year of the undergraduate education period in the university where I work i.e. in this rural environment. On the other hand, starting from the first semester I prepare students for this course in the long term via giving them some basic readings on gender in all of my other courses. With the help of the course content, which opens the dominant patriarchal values to questioning and discussion, I tried to create an opportunity for feminist pedagogies and classrooms in the middle of the conflict created by the rural environment of the university. Apart from describing this experience, this study will also refer to a data evaluation of a survey composed of a certain number of gender awareness questions that I conducted with 50 students from this course.

Our paper aims to quantify levels of competitiveness of the selected Commonwealth of Independent States countries(Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine) and Turkey in vegetables and fruit sector and sub-sectors during the 1995-2012 period with respect to world market. Because only these CIS countries have prolonged annual data for vegetables and fruit sector in this period, these countries are selected for our paper. Our paper uses export and import data obtained from UNCTAD database and the data set covers the period of 1995 to 2012. To investigate competitiveness of these five countries five indexes are calculated: The Relative Comparative Advantage Index (RCA), The Relative Export Advantage Index (RXA), The Relative Import Penetration Index (RMP), The Relative Trade Advantage Index (RTA) and The Revealed Competitiveness (RC). Our findings indicate that Moldova and Turkey have high comparative advantage in vegetables and fruit sector than Belarus, Russia and Ukraine with respect to the world market. The comparative advantage level of Turkey has decreasing trend during the 1995-2012 period. The import penetration of Moldova has been higher level than Turkey which can be said as her rival.

Who would believe after 150 years of publication of Darwin’s seminal work, now capitalist accumulation reaches a level of publishing an “inventory of Genes” book? Ironically, the writer of this book may very well be a Patent Office! Unfortunately, they give a wrong name. The name of this inventory genome manual must be “Origins of artificial Species under capitalist ‘natural’ selection and Private Property.”. Capitalist production has been a social production, but now becomes as well immediate production of society, to be more accurate, production of new genetic combinations of human and other species-being